Seals are used in numerous industries including agricultural, construction, forestry, transportation, and utility. Lip seals are commonly used on equipment such as transmission housings, around rotating shafts and where the prevention of leaks is important. Installation of these annular resilient seals can be difficult in applications where the size and or geometric features of the components to which they are being installed are large or bulky. The use of conventional tooling and or presses in this environment is impractical.
Ergonomic nightmares occur where operators are required to install seals toward the end of the assembly process. At this stage, the equipment and systems are often extremely large and bulky, where, for example, the transmissions already have their housings attached. The size of the housings for construction and agricultural equipment transmissions is typically significantly great, again leading to difficult later assembly installation. For example, seals that must be placed deep into housing bores lead to blind sight installation and require severe bending and twisting of the body and arms, which is a great concern when using known conventional tooling.
Enabling ergonomically safe and quality installations also has significant advantages from a serviceability standpoint, when the equipment is out in the field or with a dealer for repair. Additionally, ineffective processes can lead to wasted money as well as higher manufacturing costs and serious timing problems.
Seal installation is, of course quite well known to the prior art. While the use of various insertion apparatuses is old in the art, the use of conventional hammer tools has presented a number of problems. Most lip seals are hammered in, as discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,695 ('695) to Curtis. The '695 patent describes a necessary force to position a seal within a gap which is applied by a direct thrust applied to a tool upon its head region for a hammer impact. This conventional type tooling may lead to shock being induced into the seal and or surrounding area, thereby decreasing the quality.
Other conventional processes involve attaching a base unit, secured by nuts on threaded rods, to a casting, with the base unit locating in a bore. A seal is placed on a manual driver which pilots in the base unit, and then is driven into the seal bore by striking the opposite end of a driver with a hammer. Whenever a driving force delivered by impact is delivered, the potential for damaging the seal or the inner surface of the bore is always present.
An apparatus and method are needed to provide a way to install lip seals in specific applications where conventional tooling is impractical. A method is needed that provides a means of complying with lip seal assembly best practices to improve the quality of assembled products. A tool is needed that reduces the quantity of loose tooling; reduces handling of products during assembly, and reduces the time required to complete lip seal assembly by reducing the individual installation steps. The tool should also address the known problems with seals not installing straight (thereby causing leaks) and correct the numerous situations where non-piloted drivers are used (and where piloting is not possible).
The present innovation differs from those predecessor installation tools in that this design teaches simultaneous piloting and driving during installation of the lip seal. This eliminates the need for a separate drive force from the use of a hammer or other instrument. These and other difficulties experienced with the prior art tools have been obviated in a novel manner by the present disclosure.